


Food To Pilgrims Given

by Barb Cummings (Rahirah)



Series: The Barbverse [4]
Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-14
Updated: 2009-11-14
Packaged: 2017-10-02 16:55:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,546
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8617
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rahirah/pseuds/Barb%20Cummings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thanksgiving at the crypt.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Food To Pilgrims Given

**Author's Note:**

> This story is set in the same universe as _A Raising in the Sun_, _Necessary Evils_, et. al. (See the [Barbverse Timeline](http://sleepingjaguars.com/buffy/viewpage.php?page=timeline) for specifics.) It contains spoilers for previous works in the series.

Sunbeams slanted overhead, stenciling the pattern of the crypt's window bars on the opposite wall. Spike slouched down in his battered armchair, and took a desultory drag on his second cigarette of the day. Bored. No, restless. Bored and restless. Four in the afternoon. Nothing on telly, nowhere to go and nothing to kill. Or rather, plenty of places to go, but none of them had any attraction without... Not that he needed company. Far from it. All those clumsy stupid fragile humans, bumbling around and getting in his way-a chap just learned to tolerate them, and they'd scarper off and leave him at loose ends.

Spike snorted and stubbed the cigarette out on the chair-arm. Pathetic, was what he was. No inner resources. Well, no more of that. The sun would be down soon, and he'd just step out and find himself some fun.

Footsteps on the gravel path outside brought him to a tense red alert until he identified the scent. As Spike relaxed again, Dawn Summers materialized out of the hazy autumn light, head down, hands crammed into the pockets of her hoodie. She knocked on the open door of the crypt and hovered on the threshold, prodding the moss-grown crack between the flagstones with the toe of one sneaker and trying to look nonchalant. "Hey. You busy tonight?"

Wouldn't do to look like he'd been moping round the crypt like an abandoned puppy. "Matter of fact, I am," Spike said, matching her nonchalance. "Got quite a night planned. Was just about to hit the sewers and..."

Dawn pointed silently to his unbooted feet. One white, bony toe peeked through a hole in his sock. Spike sighed in defeat and wriggled it. "What're you doing here, Bit? Thought you lot were in L.A. for the weekend."

"Dad called and canceled at the last minute. He had a work thing." Dawn wandered in and settled on the end of the coffin currently doing duty as a coffee table. "At least he did it in person instead of delegating it to his secretary."

"Git." Spike straightened up, hopeful. "Your sis very disappointed?" Hank Summers, in his opinion, had a promising future ahead of him as an hors d'oeuvre.

"If only," Dawn muttered. "That would mean she cared about something. Xander and Willow already had other plans, so Buffy... She just shrugged said there was no point in cooking for just the two of us and we shouldn't spend the extra money anyway. She wasn't sad or angry or anything. Just ..." Her voice broke, and she ground the heel of one palm into her eyes. "Empty. I can tell she's trying, but it's like her insides are all scooped out. We never should have brought her back. We screwed up, Spike. I screwed up."

Sodding hell, he was no good with guilt. Wasn't built for it. It made him itchy, deep down in a place that shouldn't itch, and that brassed him off. "P'raps not, but we did. Milk's spilt, so no sense in crying over it. And what's this I screwed up business? Couldn't have done it without Will's mojo, nor my soul, either."

"I was the one who said yes," she said, those big blue eyes far too cold for one so young. "You wouldn't have let Willow use my blood for the Raising if I hadn't said yes, would you? And now every time Buffy looks at me, she knows it's my fault."

It hurt, looking into those eyes, for no reason he could name. "She doesn't blame you, love. Me, maybe, and Will, but not you. Here, let's have some light."

He tossed Dawn his lighter, heaved himself out of the armchair and padded across the crypt to the kitchen while she applied flame to a bank of fat ivory candles. He peered inside the ancient refrigerator. "Not my holiday, mind, but no reason we can't have..." A six-pack of Heineken, a half-empty jar of peanut butter, something which might once have resembled cheese, two pints of pig's blood, and a jar of dill pickles. "...something festive." He examined the pickles dubiously. At least they were supposed to be green. "Be a love and see what's in the cupboard."

Fifteen minutes later the two of them were seated at the scarred table in the cozy glow of the candles, Dawn assembling peanut butter-pickle cracker sandwiches on a cracked but elegant platter, while Spike pared the moldy bits off the cheese with his second-best hunting knife. "Probably good for you, this," he told Dawn reprovingly. "Antibiotic properties, I shouldn't wonder."

Dawn wrinkled her nose. "Eww. Like I trust your medical opinion. You're already dead." The microwave dinged, and she hopped up to get his mug of blood. "Hey, remember that first Thanksgiving when you showed up on Giles's doorstep, all chipped up? And you told me you'd give me a shilling you took from the first man you'd ever killed if I snuck out and got you some blood?"

If anyone had told him two years ago that he'd look back on being tied to a chair and shot full of arrows with nostalgia, he'd have tried it out on them to see how they liked it. "And you brought me gravy with red food coloring in it."

"Hey. The butcher was closed. I had to improvise." Dawn tossed her hair. "You still owe me a shilling."

Spike chuckled and raised his mug. "To decimalization."

"It's weird to think none of that actually happened." Her face went somber, and she wound a strand of long brown hair around a finger. "Do you ever wonder what did?"

Spike impaled a cube of cheese on the tines of the toasting fork with a shrug, and held it over the flame of the nearest candle. "No. Not much point in it, is there?"

Dawn turned brooding eyes to her cracker assemblage. "I wish, in a totally non-vengeancey way..."

The door slammed (only the Slayer, Spike reflected, could slam an open door) and Buffy stood on the threshold, dramatically backlit by the last rays of setting sun. "Spike, Dawn's-" Buffy stopped, closed her mouth, blinked. "Here. Why is Dawn here?"

"Dawn really prefers not to be talked about in the third person," Dawn grumbled. "I told you I was going to see Spike." Not accusing. More despairing. "You were sitting in the living room, watching the Weather Channel. You nodded and everything. Were you even listening?"

"I-" For a second Buffy looked utterly lost. "I'm sorry," she said to her sister. "I just...I must have spaced out."

For that second, it wasn't enough that Spike could see her and scent her and hear her voice when a month ago all he'd had were memories-for that second, he felt...not guilt, maybe, because he couldn't quite remember what guilt felt like to make the comparison, but something second cousin to it, and no more pleasant. Dawn had shed her blood and he'd let Willow sacrifice his long-lost soul without a qualm, because it had seemed to him the best of a bad lot of choices-best, because he and Dawn got Buffy back, but not right.

But it wasn't a feeling he could wrap his head around for long, and there wasn't any point to it anyway, was there? No more than in fretting over what his memories would be if Dawn weren't in them. "May as well sit down and have a cuppa as long as you're here, love."

Buffy pulled up a chair and sat. Dawn passed her a Mason jar of cold water. Buffy regarded the cracker sandwiches uncertainly-which was perhaps a good sign, considering the ingredients. "Um. I'm pretty certain one of these things is not like the others."

"Here, then." Spike selected a cracker, spread the gooey golden blob of toasted cheese on top, and offered it to her. "Eat it while it's hot, pet."

The Slayer bit into the cracker with the same dutiful resignation with which she headed out on patrol of nights. Chewed. Set the remainder down on the platter, almost reverently, and met Spike's eyes. "I like cheese," she said in a small, surprised voice. "I'd totally forgotten. I like cheese." She waved at the block Spike was still holding. "I mean, this stuff is more of a transitional cheeseoid life form, but in general? I like cheese."

Dawn didn't smile-that would have been jinxing it. But she did raise a challenging eyebrow. "What's the matter, too much of a wuss to try the cracker sandwiches?"

"In a word? Yes." She grimaced as Spike silently handed her another cracker dripping with melting cheddar. "Dawn, I'm sorry. This is kind of a crappy Thanksgiving. I should have-"

"Oi, have a care for the host's tender feelings," Spike interrupted, with a threatening gesture of the toasting fork. "Look at it this way. No bears."

And Buffy did break into a smile, then, which made it all worthwhile, for tonight anyway. "True. No bears."

Might not have been the right thing, what he'd done, but he'd make the best of it. Not his holiday, this. But still, Spike thought as he settled back to watch the play of candlelight across the sisters' faces, he had something to be thankful for.

 

 

END


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